


what the floodgates cannot hold

by Hymn



Category: GetBackers
Genre: D/s themes, Eavesdropping, M/M, Mild Voyeurism, Multi, badly lol, because when aren't there with these guys!, getting together fic, if i missed anything pls pls let me know!, kind of, mild violence, negotiating a polyamorous relationship, seeeex, toshiki is a creeper lol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-07-25
Updated: 2007-07-25
Packaged: 2019-05-08 03:20:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14685372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hymn/pseuds/Hymn
Summary: Seeing Kazuki again made Toshiki want to throw up. It was a rush of excitement, of dread, of eager anticipation, of want and need and desperation and a child-like desire to be loved in return. It was the reason that Toshiki had left and the reason he had come back.Seeing Juubei again was like ripping open a wound you’d left to heal in shame, and resentment came pouring in, resentment and despair and a quiet sadness that came on quiet feet, to accompany the wash of tainted memories.Maybe, he thought, maybe if I attack the source, instead of trying to cut myself off from it.





	what the floodgates cannot hold

**Author's Note:**

> spk, GetBackers, Toshiki/Kazuki: Touching - "I want to break the surface"

The night was still, a timid kind of calm, where the darkness wasn’t dangerous, and the stars trembled in the heavens, as if they couldn’t decide whether to come down from their lofty prison, or not. Toshiki stayed close at his leader’s side, glad to be there, near him, watching over him; it was a rare treat, too: just him and Kazuki amidst the cold concrete, just Toshiki and the boy he’d decided to hang his future on.

Then Kazuki said, “The blue of the sky reminds me of Juubei’s eyes. Beautifully deep.”

With a sigh, Toshiki admitted to himself that, even if Kazuki’s second was not physically present, he was never far away. Toshiki closed his eyes, and bowed his head so that the starlight wouldn’t light up the frustrated line of his jaw, and replied, “Yes. It does.”

*

Toshiki could not hate Juubei, but he could not help resenting him, either. Juubei had a past with Kazuki, and he had a future with their threadmaster, as well. Toshiki could see it in the tender smiles they shared, the calm silences, the hands that touched and fingers that caught when they thought he was not looking.

It hurt. Toshiki was made of power and strength, and he had left his past behind because his pride could not bear the thought of submitting to cold eyes and a flippant desire. And then he’d come here, and Kazuki had hypnotized him without trying, and beneath the warmth pooled in brown eyes, it was an easy matter to bow his head and follow orders, to bend his power and will to such a cause, full of a tender grace.

Toshiki saw Kazuki, and he saw what he wanted his future to be, but it wasn’t the same as what Juubei and Kazuki had, no matter how often he took Juubei’s hand, and no matter how often Kazuki smiled at him, and filled his world with light and laughter and a strength that kept his feet steady on the path before him.

It was worse when he couldn’t help thinking that he only had himself to blame. Perhaps, even if they could not have had a past together, they could have at least shared. But when Kazuki asked, at a beginning that seemed so long ago, all Toshiki had responded with was, “Your threads have cut the tethers that once bound me, Kazuki. I no longer have a past.”

It seemed like a good answer at the time, but was it? Toshiki did not know, but felt keenly that it was a lost opportunity, a regret he had only himself to blame.

*

“Toshiki,” Kazuki said, implacable and danger-sharp. Toshiki, panting and bleeding, tossed his head to clear his vision of his sweat-damp bangs, so that he could see him, see Kazuki. 

“Yes, Kazuki?”

It was a large gang, and Toshiki’s strength was insurmountable, but they were outnumbered, and many of their opponents were tricksters, cowards who pretended one thing and did another and fought without honor. Toshiki gritted his teeth, and glared at them, hoping that they read their death in his eyes.

Then Kazuki was alighting next to him, a pile of rubble behind them that had occurred from Toshiki’s body impacting far too hard with the cement. Kazuki’s hand was warm and strong, thin and lethal against his shoulder, and Toshiki relaxed without meaning to beneath it, lost some of his battle-focus, and the world realigned differently before him.

“Go,” Kazuki murmured to him. “Watch Juubei’s back. This is not the dance for you, my beautiful Toshiki. I will handle this.”

“But Kazuki-”

“No,” Kazuki told him, looking fierce and calm and deadly, lithe in his elegant clothing, his brown hair fluttering around his shoulders. “What kind of leader would I be if I let you kill yourself,” he turned, just briefly, to smile sweetly at Toshiki, to make Toshiki burn and shiver and his heart to try and escape his chest. And then there was a mocking laugh as one of their opponents saw the weak moment, saw it and took it.

No, Toshiki’s mind screamed, and his muscles tensed, to move, to get in front of Kazuki as soon as he could, but Kazuki’s bells were already chiming, and the expression on his face was one of haughty contempt. Their attacker screamed as the threads ripped him apart, a shining web of lethality. 

“This is not a time for you to disobey my orders,” Kazuki said patiently, his fingers working with a tender precision in the air, gaze focused, and brows lightly furrowed. “Go watch Juubei’s back, Toshiki. I will handle this.”

Toshiki swallowed, awed for a moment by the uncanny grace with which his threadmaster dealt with the problem of this would-be rival gang. He nodded, and said, “Yes, sir,” before dashing to Juubei, who welcomed him at his back with a sigh of – not relief, but pleasure.

“Kazuki entered the battle, then?”

“Yes,” Toshiki said, deflected blows off his arm guards.

Juubei, shifting warm and steady behind him, solid and real, laughed. In his voice was the knowledge of years by Kazuki’s side, and Toshiki felt a little fission of jealousy, which he took out in the face of the fool charging towards them. “Then it won’t take long, now!”

Indeed: it did not take long at all.

*

He heard them by accident. It was against everything Toshiki stood for to snoop, to spy, to walk in the shadows. It was by accident, and it broke something inside of him, broke it irreparably. He felt the moment that it shattered, a sudden splintering and falling apart of jagged, worthless pieces.

He was keeping guard. He was watching for attack; he was making certain that they would be protected, and he thought he’d seen something, thought he’d seen interlopers, so he’d dashed back, quick so as not to call too much attention, and made his way to their current address, a mostly sturdy structure of cement and windows that still had curtains clinging desperately to them. There was a bed, and a running bathroom; luxuries, because of how comfortable they were. 

The windows were open when Toshiki got there, but he didn’t call for them – it wasn’t wise to call attention at night in the Limitless Fortress – but he wasn’t spying. It was on accident, that as he passed one curtained window, a soft glow of light showing from within, he heard them.

“Ka-Kazuki.”

Toshiki’s feet stopped of their own accord.

“Kazuki, _please_!”

There were soft sounds, of young lithe, muscular bodies moving, shifting on sheets; the creak of a mattress, a quiet, desperate cry. Toshiki’s muscles tensed, prepared for battle, because that was Juubei, Juubei who sounded like he was dying, like he was breaking and needing some sort of salvation.

Toshiki’s feet were rooted to the ground outside that window, and what he heard was an accident.

“Please, what?” Kazuki asked, voice a warm, golden chime, a syrupy hunger that melted against Toshiki without even knowing of its effect on not one, but two. Toshiki closed his eyes, and shuddered to hear that tone in his threadmaster’s voice. “Please, what, sweet Juubei? Please kiss you? Please fist you? Please fuck you? Please, please make you scream?”

“Y-yes! Yes, yes, Kazuki, yes.”

“Yes to what?”

“ _Anything_.”

Toshiki’s pulse was pounding inside of him, his cock was throbbing in his jeans, and he could only blame half of it on being a teenager, on not being able to control his hormones. Most of it he had no choice but to blame on himself, on his aching need for Kazuki, for Kazuki to threaten him with mind-shattering pleasure, for Kazuki to threaten to fuck him until he screamed, for Kazuki’s soft, dangerous, hungry voice to be turned on Toshiki.

It wasn’t though. It was turned on Juubei; always, always Juubei.

Toshiki’s feet could move again; it was like the echo of his heart breaking inside of him reverberated straight down and shocked the rest of his body loose from paralysis. Toshiki turned, and ran, straight to that disturbance he’d thought he’d seen, prayed, now that he had seen. He needed a fight, needed something to break like he’d been broken; he would rather bleed, than cry.

*

He was healing in that self-same bed, the next day, with Kazuki moving about the compartment in sharp, agitated movements. His bells clanked and chimed viciously, and Toshiki closed his eyes and tried to pretend like his skin wasn’t touching the sheets. He didn’t want to know if he could smell them, could smell whatever Kazuki and Juubei had wound up doing before the explosions had caught their attention and they’d come to rescue him. 

He didn’t want to know if he could smell that, but he couldn’t help but long for Kazuki’s scent, to turn his head and maybe catch the sweetness of his hair, the musk of his skin. Toshiki held very still, and Kazuki made a quiet, angry noise in the back of his throat as he tried to thread a needle, to mend Toshiki’s shirt. 

In the heavy silence of noon, Kazuki finally spoke to him. “That was stupid,” he said, as if merely commenting on the weather.

Toshiki gritted his teeth. “I didn’t want to…disturb your…rest.”

Kazuki snorted, and Toshiki knew without looking that the little tic he had over his right eye would be twitching full blast. “Next time,” Kazuki said simply, “disturb it.”

With his eyes closed, Toshiki saw the soft light of candles through a closed curtain, saw darkness deep against the cement and night, felt his heart breaking as he listened to Kazuki and Juubei make love, listened to Kazuki speaking to Juubei, touching Juubei, loving Juubei in a way that Kazuki never would with him. Kazuki would never look at Toshiki as he looked at Juubei. It would always be Juubei, always.

Toshiki asked: “Where did you come from? Where did you come from before you came to be here, Kazuki?”

It was a desperate question, a desperate attempt even when there was nothing to hope for.

Toshiki couldn’t help that every particle that made him strained to hear the answer, strained to see if, maybe, it wasn’t too late. See if maybe he could have a piece of Kazuki that Juubei did; see if he could know him.

Kazuki was silent for long moments, and then he said: “I came from fire and loss, Toshiki. And then I came here, to hell. I won’t lose you too.”

Toshiki swallowed, hard. He was already lost; he had never even been found, not really. Not when all Kazuki really saw was Juubei. Faintly, Toshiki murmured, “Yes, sir,” and tried not to think, because if he let himself think, he might start crying, and there was no telling if he’d ever stop. 

*

When Kazuki went to the Thunder Emperor, Toshiki left. He thought, maybe, if he could learn to cut out his heart, like a tumor, maybe it wouldn’t spread to the rest of his life. Maybe, if he forgot all about Kazuki and Juubei and what it felt to live for a purpose that you loved, maybe he could get by, move on. 

It had to be better than destroying himself, day after day, watching Kazuki and Juubei revolve around each other in some obscure lover’s orbit. Toshiki left, and he hoped that was that. The end.

It wasn’t, of course:

Toshiki couldn’t live without his heart. 

*

Seeing Kazuki again made Toshiki want to throw up. It was a rush of excitement, of dread, of eager anticipation, of want and need and desperation and a child-like desire to be loved in return. It was the reason that Toshiki had left and the reason he had come back. 

Seeing Juubei again was like ripping open a wound you’d left to heal in shame, and resentment came pouring in, resentment and despair and a quiet sadness that came on quiet feet, to accompany the wash of tainted memories. 

Maybe, he thought, maybe if I attack the source, instead of trying to cut myself off from it. 

Again, it was a desperate man’s plan, but Toshiki had been left without options, no other avenue. Kazuki had always been his path, his one shining future no matter which way he looked at it, since the moment they’d met, since the moment Toshiki had clasped Juubei’s hand with joy, while Kazuki watched on and smiled and he found a home within Elegance, with these two at his side.

And then Kazuki, sweet, unyielding, strange and mystifying Kazuki, who had always seen something other than brute strength in Juubei and loved it, but not in him, stepped between, and took the shattered, throbbing pieces of Toshiki’s heart, and squeezed them so hard and so warm and so right that when he tenderly let go, his heart was whole again.

Toshiki cried, and didn’t know if he would ever stop. Kazuki knelt down, and his words echoed in Toshiki’s ear - “I always watched you” - and Toshiki didn’t care if his strength lay useless before Kazuki’s warm brown eyes. He had changed so much; all of them had changed, and yet not at all. They were still here, and Toshiki finally realized that Toshiki had his own orbit too, an orbit that revolved around Kazuki just like Juubei’s did, sliding smoothly, seamlessly along. It was there; it was just that all Toshiki could see was how much farther Kazuki and Juubei’s had been; he hadn’t realized that his and Kazuki’s could go just as far, given time.

He said, “Kazuki,” and then stopped, tears flowing, on his hands and knees before his tenderly smiling god, not knowing what else to do, where to go from here; except: wherever Kazuki led him.

“Oh, Toshiki,” Kazuki sighed, fond and sad and happy, and his palm was warm against Toshiki’s cheek, his thumb slow and tender across the tear tracks. Toshiki leaned into it, shamelessly, and made a broken sound in his throat when Kazuki’s lips kissed his so tenderly. 

*

It would have been harder if they hadn’t had to go straight into battle. If there had been time for insecurities to take hold, for awkward silences to break and fester and shake tentative welcomes back. Because even if Kazuki was willing to forgive and love in a moment’s notice, regardless of Toshiki’s worthiness, there was a breach between Toshiki and Juubei which could have ruined everything.

As it was, nothing could have started the healing quite so well as fighting back to back with Juubei for their common goal, trusting each other to better protect that which they both loved more than anything.

Afterwards, when they were the ones left standing, panting into a new a dawn, life thrumming electric through their bodies, Kazuki turned to Toshiki, and asked, “Do you have a place to stay at?”

“I…” Toshiki felt tongue tied, and terrified, and hopeful. “There is the girl Ren, where we stayed with Masaki. She should go back to her grandfather’s, however.”

Kazuki smiled. “I would like to see her again. Come on, we’ll go and get your things from there, and make sure she gets home safely. And then, I think, we should go back to Juubei’s, and sleep. We’ve earned a rest.”

Toshiki slanted a look at Juubei, who stood silent and blind, and then Toshiki heard himself saying, “I’ll take the couch.” Kazuki raised his eyebrows in surprise, but did not protest more than that.

*

“It was…noble of you,” Juubei said, days later, sitting innocently and determinedly on his couch, where Toshiki’s pillows and blanket had once been. Now they were in a neat pile on the floor, and Juubei was calmly blowing at the steam curling from his tea.

“I- What? Kakei, what is the meaning of this?”

Toshiki’s heart was pounding – in the dark recesses of his newly restored heart, the part of him that still remembered the sadness and the heartache and the feeling of always being left behind, he had been waiting for this. He braced his shoulders, and waited to be kicked out.

“Don’t be a fool, Uryuu.” Juubei took a long, lingering sip of his tea, and it was a long, lingering moment of torture for Toshiki. “Kazuki wants you. Why are you keeping him waiting?”

Toshiki stared at him. Juubei took another calm sip of his tea, and melted back into the weathered comfort of his couch. “I’ll sleep out here tonight.”

“I…”

“Don’t thank me,” Juubei said, with a small smirk. “It’s an unforgiving business. I doubt you’ll get much sleep. You can make your own coffee in the morning.”

“I…” Toshiki blinked, and swallowed, and bowed his head, so that the blind man wouldn’t see the naked emotion on his face. “Thank you,” he said anyway.

Quietly, Juubei said, “It’s what Kazuki wants,” and that was the end of that.

*

That night, Toshiki stood in the doorway to Juubei’s bedroom, instead of the other man, and Toshiki held his breath, watching his threadmaster fluff pillows, and turn down the sheets. It was Juubei’s bedroom, but Toshiki had been given permission, and now it was up to Kazuki to decide what came next. 

“Well?” his leader asked almost playfully. “Are you coming in or aren’t you, Toshiki?”

With a small jump, Toshiki moved, and closed the door behind him, blushing. “Of course, Kazuki.” Kazuki shook out one more pillow to a satisfactorily plumpness, and Toshiki, once more, hesitated. And then Kazuki straightened, and turned to him, and at that dazzling smile Toshiki felt himself moving without the permission of his brain; his heart was throbbing, beating instructions down his body, and it stepped closer, moved to Kazuki, who was everything Toshiki worshipped.

“Kazuki,” he breathed softly, tentatively reaching up, cupping Kazuki’s face in his palms. Kazuki let him with a pleased sigh, gazing up at Toshiki with bright eyes and a barely restrained eagerness. “Kazuki, I…”

“I’ve missed you,” Kazuki said for him. “There has always been so much I regret never doing, Toshiki. But I was a fool, and I thought I had all the time in the world.”

Kazuki’s hand came up, and his thumb stroked the back of one of Toshiki’s wrists, fingers curling sweetly; Toshiki shivered, and thought that only with Kazuki would such shackles be something glorious, rather than humiliating. 

“Now that I have you,” whispered Kazuki, “I will never let you go. Come to bed with me.” 

*

In Toshiki’s mind, the single most glorious thing was touching Kazuki. It was sliding his palms down Kazuki’s sides, counting his ribs with each gentle bump; it was tracing the definition of his hips with callused fingers, and circling his waist with his arms, so that he could better feel Kazuki’s warm, soft weight. 

“Goodness,” Kazuki laughed, at one moment, his fingers stroking locks of Toshiki’s blonde hair back behind his ear. “It makes me wonder: if I tied you up, what would you promise me by the end of the night, just in exchange for you being able to touch me?”

Toshiki shuddered, long and slow, his skin burning and his brain steadily melting right along with it, lost in the scent and feel and texture of Kazuki. Thickly, he started to say, “I don’t know,” but Kazuki merely pressed kisses along his neck, soft bites and long licks, and told him: “A question to be explored another night, dearest Toshiki.”

Toshiki moaned in reply to that, because the mere admittance that there might be another night was enough to make Toshiki’s heart glow and swell and shudder so sweetly inside of him. He cried out, pressed against Kazuki, trembling, unable to stop exploring with his fingers every inch of Kazuki, ever crevice or half forgotten slope that made up Toshiki’s beautiful leader. He wanted to know every inch of him by memory when they were through, and he knew that even after he lay satiated and content, he would want to retrace every inch, just for the joy of it.

“I have always loved you,” he whispered to Kazuki, while Kazuki’s body welcomed him home, took him in and demanded he give everything he had over to Kazuki. Toshiki closed his eyes, smoothing his fingers over Kazuki’s hips and thighs restlessly, hungrily. He bowed his head, and cried out, swallowed in a tight heat that blew him apart and built him up again, and he gave over everything that he was willingly, needily.

Kazuki wrapped an arm around Toshiki’s neck, pulled him down to swallow his words with teeth and tongue and lips. “I know,” he said. “You were born for me, remember? I listened when you told me – ah! – when you, you said that I saved you from your past, remember?”

Toshiki, shuddering, weeping, and glorious with it, said, “Yes,” and knew that he had been a fool, and knew, also, that he wouldn’t dare be such a fool with this second chance. 

*

Toshiki wasn’t eavesdropping. Toshiki wasn’t spying, or sneaking, or trying to creep through the shadows and behind corners to hear things he wasn’t mean to hear. That he heard it was an accident, and his heart beat too fast and his head was a little dizzy with what he heard, and he knew beyond doubt where it was that he belonged, where it was that he was wanted.

Kazuki said to Juubei, “The blue of the sky reminds me of Toshiki’s eyes. Such an effortlessly clear blue.”

“Ah,” returned Juubei. “It must be a beautiful day, then.”

“Yes. Indeed, it is.”


End file.
